I wanted to address questions in Jonathan's post about the NY state legislature.

I am good friends with  Joel Tyner, a true grasroots progressive and activist in dutchess county NY, who is running against a well funded republican. Joel, as you can see on his website, is someone in the model of elliot spitzer and our own Nybri. In many ways Brian Keeler is his counterpart in the race for state senate.

I met joel through the local college radio station in poughkeepsie where he still, as a two term member of the local county legistlature, runs the progressive radio show he has hosted for over ten years (if you can find it, i believe on live365.com, you can listen to him every sunday night at 10-12 by searching for 91.3fm poughkepsie.)

Please visit joels website to find out more about his record. http://www.joeltyner.org/ Check out his blog, join his email list and help him out.

Poughkeepsie, NY - The Progressive Student Caucus (vassarprogress.blogspot.com), a caucus of Vassar student groups and their leaders, has announced its alliance with campus professors in support of the Princeton-based "Filibuster Frist" movement now underway at college campus's around the country (Official Website: FilibusterFrist.com). Universities currently involved in the rapidly growing movement to prevent the elimination of the judicial filibuster through the "nuclear option" include Harvard, Cornell, Georgetown, Howard, Trinity, Stanford, George Washington, Boston College, Tufts, Boston University, Northeastern, Wellesley College, Carleton College, American University and Yale.

    As part of its support of the growing movement the caucus has drafted an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist:

9:00pm-10:30pm

Due to an overwhelming response from students, faculty, administrators and community members, we will be broadcasting tonights panel live on the web.

Those of you who won't be able to join in on this most important discussion, you can still watch from home on Quicktime or Realplayer. All you have to do is click on the magic link:

rtsp://143.229.123.240/relileftpanel.sdp

    The United Students Reformation Party and the Forum for Political Philosophy (organizers of a highly successful, nine-week long documentary series dealing with the elections) will be conducting a panel discussion on the most significant issue of our time, possibly of all time, "Religion and the Left." Panelists include

Tackling these three issues must be central to the efforts of every single liberal, democrat, progressive and caring human being in this country from this point forward. Aggressively tackling these three issues must come before everything else; before environmental initiatives, anti-globalization activities, healthcare work, education initiatives, human rights advocacy, and every other progressive cause. If we ever hope to accomplish any of our admirable goals we must first tackle these issues.

We can no longer maintain the illusion that we live in anything like a real democracy--the creation of democracy in America must be central to our efforts. It is vital that we recognize a hierarchical order of significance when we choose how to spend our time as active, progressive individuals. It is more important for us to go to step 1 and win than try to begin with step 5 and fail. This critical moment in our nations history is the time for fundamental change.